Stan,<br><br>Any reason that signatures are limited to 100 characters? How about 255? or something a little larger?<br><br>Just checking...<br><br>John<br><br>***<br>"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people." -John Adams

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"In the old days, you'd finish a day's work and announce, 'I'm done.' Nobody ever does that now. There's never enough time." -- Elliott Masie

he I am still wondering about the clause which contains,<br>"in the pursuit of happiness"<br>leaves me boggling to see the image of a nation of people running around with butterfly nets swhooshing the air endeavouring fruitlessly to ensnare this<br>elusive <br>prey <br><br>oh and guys look below... for my tip..type in the first part of your overlength quote into the message then have the last part in your signature...then post the message ... press continue.. then hit view post:.. and edit post:.. click as unmarked;) ..then delete the space between the lines of your quote; and or add bits to your quote as you will have seen if you have been watching me play with this.<br>• see mine.. "wonder why we try so hard.(space gone).and you wonder why the world..."(bits added) check this message gives you the appearance of a full quote sig. <br>•see below.. end message<br><br>Wonder why we try so hard... wonder why we try at all...You wonder why the world is turning around... When in the end it won't matter at all..Ray Thomas (Moody Blues~Every Good Boy Deserves Favour 1969)

Actually, Treebeard, Jefferson was very much an 18th century kind of guy, and was perfectly aware that pursuit of happiness meant not ever having it. Enlightenment folks were familiar with the classical notion that a person's life could never be said to be "happy" until after the person dies. After all, I can pretty comfortably affirm that I am happy right now--but that happiness is contingent on an indefinable future in which the elements that constitute my happiness might, and in many cases necessarily will disappear. SupposeI fall down the stairs when I go to let my cat in for the night or that tomorrow morning my son is killed going to school or my wife is diagnosed with cancer or my place of work goes bankrupt or nuclear war breaks out.<br><br>It's only when I am dead that those who survive me, if they care to think about it, can come to the conclusion that the shape of the life I led warrants being called "happy."<br><br>Jefferson was also familiar with the conundrum of human existence best defined by his older contemporary, Samuel Johnson, who says that "happiness lies on the right hand and on the left." The more one approaches the happiness on the right, the more one recedes from the happiness on the left. So, for instance, my wife and I decided that she would stay home without working full time until our son was in seventh grade. That led to a great deal of happiness for her, for him, for me. At the same time, it meant that my wife could not have the satisfaction of developing a career during the full course of her life, something that would also have made her happy. Happiness on the right and on the left. By the way, Freud expresses a version of that idea that's particularly apposite for this technological medium. It's great, he says in Civilization and Its Discontents that a parent who lives in New York can hop on an airplane and visit the child who lives in LA. On the other hand, the reason the child lives in LA is because technological advances (this in the 1920s) make it so easy to move from New York.<br><br>Anyway, all this suggests to me that Jefferson was perfectly aware of the ambiguity of "pursuit of happiness." I don't therefore think that he was writing duplicitously. He composed a public document, to be sure, but wrote for an educated readership that would have been as familiar as he was with the ideas of theEnlightenment and of the classical world.<br><br>And that's true too/--Shakespeare, King Lear

Yoyo, <br><br>great post.... and I hope that nothing unfortunate happens to your son, your wife, or your person...<br><br>John<br><br>***<br>"The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left." <br> -- Ecclesiastes 10:2

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"In the old days, you'd finish a day's work and announce, 'I'm done.' Nobody ever does that now. There's never enough time." -- Elliott Masie

i forget who it was that posited the theory that it is understood what makes all people unhappy: hunger, homelessness, never having enough money to pay the bills, etc... but it is less easy to determine what makes any individual happy... <br><br>"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."<br><br><br><br>~~~<br>"Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry." --Thomas Jefferson

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